End of Civilization Alert

I still get carded from time to time when I buy beer at a grocery store. At 42, I sort of enjoy it. Having lapped the legal age of drinking, I like to think I remain youthful-looking enough to pass for a 20-something. But maybe not:

Last year at a Nets game at the Izod Center, I went to buy sausages while my son, Jack, headed for the beer counter. Jack, who is in his early 40s and starting to gray, soon joined me in the sausage line, explaining his wallet was in the car and he couldn’t buy beer without an ID. After we got our food, I went to the beer line, showed my ID and left with two drafts. At halftime I headed back for another round, and this time a lady at the counter asked me to take my New York State driver’s license out of the plastic window in the wallet and hand it to her.

“Why?” I asked.

“To make sure it hasn’t expired.”

If my license had, in fact, expired, would that mean I was no longer 71? Would I then be, miraculously, too young to buy beer legally?

If someone born in the 1930s can be turned away from the concessions stand for trying to buy a $27 plastic glass of Budweiser, the world has gone mad.